It’s Time to Help Your Team Embrace Creativity

It’s Time to Help Your Team Embrace Creativity
By Michelle Symonds

Creativity is an important part of the success of a business or project. It is what makes work stand out and is vital to innovation. Being creative in the workplaces can take a project to the next level. While you may be creative yourself, it is important to maximize the creativity of the whole team to achieve greater success. While project management courses can’t inspire your own creative style, they can help you learn how to inspire it in others.

As a project manager, there are several steps you can take to inspire the creativity of your team.

1. Brainstorming

   When one person thinks of an idea, it can then inspire even better ideas from other people. Soon, ideas are bouncing around the room. Getting everyone together to brainstorm ideas is a great way to inspire creativity, however some people find this environment difficult. Therefore, you must take steps to make sure everyone feels comfortable with putting their ideas forward and make sure that everyone is listened to without fear of criticism or rejection.

2. Support and a Happy Environment

   To help a team to tap into their creative sides, it is important that they feel a sense of momentum and progress. If a team feels positive, happy, rewarded and motivated, then it is more likely that they will be able to get creative. Therefore, as the project manager, it is your role to make sure that they already feel positive, motivated and rewarded before expecting them to supply you with a barrage of ideas.

3. Improve Communication

   It is often the case that teams only get together for formal meetings and then work alone for the periods in between. However, a formal meeting is not always the best place for creativity and people will often think of their best ideas outside of the boardroom. Therefore, it is important to keep lines of communication open with members of the team at all times. Make sure you are able to listen to any new ideas they have at any time.

4. Individual Coaching
   Each member of the team has their own strengths and weaknesses, yourself included. While creativity is something that comes naturally to some people, others may find it difficult to get inspired. As a team leader, it is important to recognise this and get to know each member of the team to find out what their individual inspiration is.

5. Develop Team Autonomy

   Although a team needs to have a goal to aim for, the way they reach it does not necessarily need to be planned. People work in different ways and many work better if they have a sense of autonomy in their work. Even if a team member’s methods seem unconventional to you, the important thing is successfully meeting your targets and goals. Giving the team autonomy may actually help them to be creative in their thinking and improve the end result.

As creativity plays such an important role in the success of any project, it is vital that you use these tactics to inspire the creative side of each member of your team. It is only by doing this that you will be able to maximise the overall creativity of your team and make sure your project reaches its full potential. If you need more guidance on how to inspire creativity, you may find it beneficial to undertake some project management training; there are PM training courses available in a wide variety of subject areas that can help you develop as a project manager.

Michelle Symonds is a qualified PRINCE2 Project Manager and believes that the right project management training can transform a good project manager into a great project manager and is essential for a successful outcome to any project.

There is a wide range of formal and informal training courses now available that include online learning and podcasts as well as more traditional classroom courses from organizations such as Parallel Project Training.